A soldiers diary
by legolas's-elven-angel
Summary: read and you'll see


The River Aisne is here somewhere.  
April 17, 1917

It's pushing us all into some sort of stupor, this war. There is nothing outside of us anymore—nothing behind us and nothing in front of us. My one hand in life has been stolen from me and played by fools who think the world can be won with a lot of spilt blood.

I think it's Tuesday. Glorious, that. I just may know what day it is, and I've got no use for it and can't see why anyone ever would, if this is what a man is for.  
Robert Nivelle is a madman and I detest him. In December of last year, he replaced Joffre as Commander-in-Chief of the French Army. Prime Minister Briande is keen on Nivelle's ideals, of course; all anyone wants, I think, is a fast way out of every part of this, and Nivelle came into this promising total annihilation of German lines in forty-eight hours. Nivelle has this penchant for ordering over-the-top offensives, though, and anyone who has seen one of these morbid inanities in action ought to know quite a bit better.  
He sends men over the trenches in ridiculous numbers, watches them charge straight into an insuperable onslaught of machinegun fire and drop dead, not having gained or lost the rest of us anything at all, and he sends another round of men out, and it all happens over and over and I have half a mind to shove my gun between his teeth should I ever come face to face with him.  
The numbers for today turn my stomach and only drive my bloodlust for Nivelle that many times hotter, but no more than yesterday. Yesterday was the first day of the Nivelle Offensive. They threw a million of us out on a broad front between Royle and Reims; nineteen divisions of the French Fifth and Sixth Armies under General Mangin attacked the German frontline, the German Seventh. Over forty thousand casualties are being suffered on our side, but the loss of one hundred and fifty Char Schneiders won't be mourned, hideous cardboard shoeboxes they were. Nivelle's creeping barrage didn't protect any lives.  
When I collapsed next to Tomas in the trenches today, in a moment more quiet than we could have hoped for, I asked him why war is so terrible.  
He laughed. He had good reason to—it was a thoughtless question, but I was tired then (and am still) with a three-year-old heaviness, and stupid with a three-year-old mindset of someone whose life is avoiding death.  
He put a cigarette between my lips, and lit it saying, "Why is the sky blue?"  
He nearly had me, but I glanced up. "The sky is red."  
His eyes shifted up and glinted, and he smiled a soldier's smile. "It is good that war is so terrible, Elia…lest we grow fond of it."

They shall not pass.  
April 18, 1917

A soldier in the middle of a field with a rifle in his hands and a gas mask around his neck…there are flames of war at his back, and across the sky in the orange smoke it reads, "On ne passe pas!"  
Nivelle said this at Verdun. Now it's on an orange-colored poster propagandizing the complete sacrifice of young men's lives, calling it the noble thing, the patriotic thing, the only thing. We shall not pass beyond this war, he's right. There is a void beyond it that none of us will ever gain any sort of footing in.

I knew names when I came here. I knew people who died in Monday's massacre, but I don't know their names anymore. Learning more about Tomas than his name was foolish of me, but sometimes you've got to have something to call home.  
It's damned near impossible, but I try not to lose him when he moves. The trenches are some eight feet deep, and even so we keep on our stomachs. He'll grab me by the head if I'm not paying attention to him, and we'll crawl through the mud until he stops. He's got an instinct for bombardments and generals who tell you to climb over the top and run to your death, so I follow his lead. Tomas and I do whatever we can to avoid being a part of these suicide missions. I've never touched No Man's Land and I've never had to touch a man, not in three years—all thanks to Tomas.  
I began this knowing that I would have to be independent, so I avoided so many people, but all it took was one. Without Tomas I wouldn't last a day out here. I'd hear so many sounds and see so many faces, my body'd try to go in three different directions and I'd be shot standing still looking like…looking like a young Frenchman having a fit. Funny, out here, that's enough to get you killed.  
Pretty much first thing dawn, Tom tapped my helmet to wake me and handed me a bit of a stale baguette with a murmur of, "There're thousands more bodies lying somewhere out there today already. You ready to play hide and seek with Mangin?"  
I paled. "He's here?"  
"They want more lemmings."  
"What in hell kind of good does it do!"  
He's weary of my tirades, but I can do nothing to control them anymore. There's nothing in me willing to accept the Nivelle Offensive, even though I know I haven't got a choice. I've already been traded off and I know very well I'm going to die here.  
He only sighed, though. "It doesn't. Everyone knows it doesn't. But we can't keep doing this, Elia."  
I keep worrying one day Tom's going to run out there with a great stupid lot of them, and when he falls, I'll be lost. I've already ruined my chances at independent survival, tagging along at Tomas's heels for this eternity.  
Nivelle still thinks what he's pulling is going to work. It's damn well been forty-eight hours, though, and the bodies keep piling up and the Germans aren't even limping.

"Raise what's left of the flag for me."  
April 19, 1917

Every soldier—of the Alliance, of the Entente—is running around Europe firing bullets at nearly anything of a different color and running from bullets chasing after his own color, because of only a few men. We're being used to settle something between only a few men who haven't got the commonsensical competence to settle it between themselves. They're rolling us over Europe like dice, and all of us are loaded. I suppose that's what I'm doing here—as well as the other Frenchmen, the British, the Russians—fighting ravenous fire with fire.

Tom told me yesterday that we couldn't hide forever, and he was insufferably correct. I never thought the trenches would feel so cozy.  
I've got my first gunshot wound in ages. I couldn't feel more alive. We hit the ground running and slipping through the black mud and crashed onto our fronts under a barrage of machinegun fire and I was devoured by such terror in that moment, with my body in the wet black sludge and my face in a red puddle and my hands stiff and cold around my gun, that the instant I felt the absence of the gunfire, I sprang to my feet and ran onward like a lunatic. Tom was screaming my name against the deafening explosions, but I only ran about six feet before I dove into the mud under another onslaught. I was a little late, though, or my dive was too high. Bullet skimmed the left side of my jaw and I was paralyzed on the spot from the shock of it. Tom came out of nowhere to drag me back home, running like a hunch and hauling me after him. I would have stood if I hadn't been so overcome with the satisfaction of the pain. The very moment my flesh was torn open, burning and singing like all seven hells in chorus, it felt like something I needed…something I deserved. I have been a coward, avoiding my own Company in the trenches. I have been a coward to think my death would mean anything here. I am possessed by this war, and if my death means nothing to it, my death should mean nothing to me.  
This pain is glorious. Tom's thigh has been grazed and the man is so apart from his body that he's only barely hobbling when he walks. It doesn't concern him, and he tells me it oughtn't concern me. He's keeping gauze to my jaw and calling me delirious. Some of the men have been chancing wary glances at me like they're worried I'm going to run out there again, and I feel it in my bones—I could do it, I really could. But I won't. I'll wait until Tom will run over that cliff with me, and our company's been called back anyway.  
I don't care so much anymore that we've gotten no headway. But still, we've gotten no headway. Nivelle is a silly old man, but I'm not going to waste my emotions anymore. This thrill throbbing in my face is too much to not be overtaken by. I want it now. I want to be a part of this thing—this living, breathing, undulating, half-dead body of resistance. I want to bite my nails tomorrow and taste German blood amidst all the rest of the grime.  
All Tom has said to me today is: "Elia! Don't look at me like you're drunk."

There is a complete and very convenient lack of taphophobia around here.  
April 20, 1917

We're all in the same boat, and too many of us are dying.  
It isn't so much that we're jumping overboard, either—it's that Nivelle has been shoving us over the godforsaken side. He cares about us about as much as Briande does, which is only a little more than Wilhelm himself.  
Nivelle admits his gross oversight, but nothing has happened as a result. No less men died today than they did yesterday, but there has been a little gain west of Soissons, which is, however, due to Operation Alberich, not the Nivelle Offensive.  
It's beginning to look like everyone wants him out, and the sooner, the better. In the meantime, I have ways of amusing myself.  
I sat in the trenches this morning passing a flask of cognac between Tom, myself, and a young recruit I'd never noticed before.  
Tomas's dark eyes paused on me suddenly, blazed for an instant, and I grabbed the younger man and dragged him further along the trench as far as we could manage, not knowing how far off Tomas's senses were.  
And thirty seconds later we were thrusting our hands out of the soft soil like zombies, crawling and rolling down the mound into what was left of the trench, sputtering and snorting and choking and blinded by the dirt we'd just emerged from. I looked around for Tomas, and found his face grinning up at me from the mound, and he laughed, shoving his arms up out of the moist dirt and flexing his hands at me, "At least they tried to bury us!"  
I pulled him up like a weed and dusted him off once or twice before heading back into the trench. The dirt between my teeth tasted like vengeance and inside my worried wound it felt like it. With four other men, Tom and I rolled one of the 75s into the field and opened fire on those German bastards' trenches. Inundated them for nearly half a mile, with three other field cannons following our example.  
Running through No Man's Land with your head up and your shoulders straight feels like no miracle you'll ever experience again.  
Feeling invincible, a good five or six soldiers of the same Company, sharing the same single elation among us, we ran with our hands around the barrels of our lebels, fingers miles away from the triggers, and once the first assault of machinegun fire came sailing at us from the trenches across the way, we all laughed the same giddy, showy laugh, smiles lighted by the shell flashes all around, and crashed back into our hole in the ground.  
I felt ten-years-old for a priceless moment, and still I felt immortal.

Half a man is still a man.  
April 21, 1917

Home is a fool's paradise. Men are wailing for home, home, home, and they fall against the walls of the trenches for support without even realizing it. Inside here, we're worms, moles. Out there, out in No Man's Land, we're fools, but we're gods. And then we're dead.

I'm definitely somewhere along the Aisne—I can see the river if I wander far enough along this trench and fall into the one a ways behind it. The water is like a mirage and we would run to it, but it's infested with flying ammunition and none of us are so desperate. The river is crimson. It was as if Jesus were here.  
I won't be moving so much anymore, as it is. Not today.  
I shoved past Tomas on the field today like it was a race. I took a bullet in the shoulder for it. I've been reckless. Tomas has been concerned. I can't feel any of my left arm, a lot of the left side of my face, my collarbone, my chest, and even my hip is almost numb. I won't be digging my way out of anything, I won't be running around; it's back to hiding, because I am not going to any infirmary. If I'm shot, I'll die out here.  
Tomas is going to stay with me. I think he needs me as much as I need him.  
I have a hunch Nivelle is going to be replaced sometime, very soon. I remember when he was given this power, this title, before anyone knew this disappointment and revulsion, and soldiers were writing home "Victory is smiling on our arms," "If you could see the enthusiasm of the troops, it's extraordinary," and "We should be home in time for the harvest." Forty-eight hours was quite a weighty promise. I smell mutiny thick in the air.  
The Offensive, at least, is over. Over-the-top is far from dead, though. And I am not done…I am far from done. If I am not dead, I will have Tomas with me braving No Man's Land tomorrow, no matter how he objects.

Worthlessness is another path to nihilism.  
April 22, 1917

It is possible to become masochistic when you're constantly surrounded by heavy sadism. Tomas told me that we would not grow fond of war since it is terrible. That would be saying, then, that men aren't obsessed with it, when it is really quite the contrary. Men who don't fight definitely are obsessed. Men who have everything to gain and nothing to lose. But when you're prodded so hard in the back by these men, to be their nothing, to be lost, it's impossible to live without that prod anymore.  
I can't fight, and that hurts so much worse than this metallic death spreading through me. I feel like I should be dead. I'm no use lying in a trench, trying not to bleed to death, being carried around and lied over under bombardments.  
Tomas gives me numbers, deaths and casualties, he gives me names of people and places, I hear that Petain could replace Nivelle and I almost smile, before I remember not to care.  
I toyed feebly with my lebel in my lap and accidentally set it off. I shot someone in the foot, and now he's across from me, looking very much like me, and he's got no right to. I want to accidentally set it off in his shoulder. Then he may look in pain.  
Tomas still fusses at the wound on my face. My jaw is locked one way from the impact. I had thought it would loosen, eventually, but it doesn't seem that way. For the most part, though, he ignores my shoulder. If I could turn my head anymore I would try to see the wound. I can barely write anymore.  
Tomas had called me sentimental for bringing a pen and paper into the trenches. I had room for them, though; it wasn't any inconvenience. I've just always been so afraid of being lost, and words are such great immortalizers (even the ones you make up…).  
"Elia," Tomas said, "it is only a Sunday—for relaxation."  
As if I will be back on my feet tomorrow.

You will know me, at least.  
April 23, 1917

I woke this morning only half an hour ago, and Tomas told me that the sky was blue.  
"…Because it's the sky, Elia," he said. "Because this is war, and it's terrible. And because you're Elia."  
But it isn't blue at all. It's red. And Tomas's face is red, his eyes, his uniform, the trenches, the clouds, the air.

My body was pawned for all it was worth on this planet. Now, under the lunula crescents of my nails, within the swirls of my fingerprints, a piece of this war will settle with me into the ground, and that little piece will die.  
I will sink into what has been mother for the past three years. I will become a part of her and I will take a piece of this terror with me.  
And those who do survive will be nothing more than ghosts in this world.

With Petain, everything will improve for Tomas and the rest of the soldiers at the front. Petain will care about their lives; he will not transform them into bubbles. He will not drive them mad with a desire to be consumed by the hanging smoke or the cracking gunfire or the opalescent pools of blood and black mud. He will not make them wish to swallow their own souls.  
Our fair-weather friend America has brought with it some morale, as well. I sense victory for the Entente.

I am going to have Tomas take me to No Man's Land over his shoulder. That's where I'm headed, anyway.


End file.
